News 12's Elizabeth Hashagen was joined this morning by Dr. Matthew Harris to discuss vaccinations.

Dr. Harris is the medical director of the Northwell Community Vaccination Program.

An FDA advisory committee was presented with dueling data, some of it suggesting there's a need for COVID-19 vaccine boosters and some of it suggesting there is no such need.

Pfizer data shows vaccine efficacy dropped 6% every two months, in terms of any symptoms. But the critical point is that when taking a look at severe illness, the vaccine is still 96.7% effective.

The formal presentation of data from Israel released earlier this month shows booster doses of vaccine not only raised immunity as measured in the blood, but also showed a real-world reduction in infection.

Moderna is also in the process of asking the FDA to authorize booster doses of its vaccine. One Moderna-led team reported interim data covering 80 volunteers in an ongoing trial who got booster doses of Moderna's authorized vaccine, or of vaccines re-formulated to match the beta variant, the gamma or P.1 variant, or the delta variant.

Additional vaccine doses, although not quite a booster, have already been approved by the CDC for the roughly 7 million immunocompromised Americans who didn't have an optimal response to the first round of mRNA vaccines. Nearly 2 million Americans have gotten an additional shot since the FDA and CDC approved them in August for that subset of people.